• Change text size
• Skip to content

National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality

Publications

• About us
• Contact us

Site navigation

• What is the National Action Plan?
• What can I do?
• Funding
• Market Based Instruments
• Projects
• Publications
  • Agreements
  • Annual Reports
  • Books and Reports
  • Brochures
  • Case Studies
  • Fact Sheets
  • Frameworks
  • Guidelines
  • Legislation
  • Media Releases
  • Newsletters
  • Policies
  • Strategies

PDF file

• Steering Committee report to Australian governments on the public response to Managing Natural Resources in Rural Australia for a Sustainable Future: A discussion paper for developing a national policy (PDF - 177 KB)

About this document

1. In recognition of Australia's critical salinity, particularly dryland salinity, and water quality problems, the Parties agree to the National Action Plan for Salinity and Water Quality in Australia (the Action Plan) at Attachment A, as the basis for developing detailed agreements between the Commonwealth and the States / Territories.
2. The Action Plan builds on the work to date and has the following key elements:
   1. targets and standards for natural resource management, particularly for salinity and water quality;
   2. integrated catchment / regional management plans developed by the community and accredited jointly by the relevant Parties, in the 21 agreed catchments / regions that are highly affected by salinity, particularly dryland salinity, and deteriorating water quality;
   3. capacity building for communities and landholders to assist them to develop and implement integrated catchment / regional plans, together with the provision of technical and scientific support and engineering innovations;
   4. an improved governance framework to secure the Commonwealth-State/Territory investments and community action in the long term, including property rights, pricing, and regulatory reforms for water and land use;
   5. clearly articulated roles for the Commonwealth, State / Territory, local government and the community to provide an effective, integrated and coherent framework to deliver and monitor implementation of the Action Plan; and
   6. a public communication program to support widespread understanding of all aspects of the Action Plan so as to promote behavioural change and community support.
3. The Parties agree that all elements of the Action Plan must be acted on. In giving effect to this the Parties agree to work to develop:
   1. i) by June 2001, Bilateral Agreements that acknowledge the variation of jurisdictional institutional and statutory approaches; and
   2. ii) Partnership Agreements with catchment / regional bodies, progressively following the signing of Bilateral Agreements, on the arrangements for implementation of salinity and water quality actions.

   4. This Intergovernmental Agreement embodies a number of principles, including:

   1. i) a focus on catchment / regional outcomes;
   2. ii) an acknowledgment of the effort of communities in relation to existing management plans and the need to build on that effort, commitment and those plans;
      
   3. iii) flexibility to reflect different circumstances in jurisdictions and the variation in the capacity and expectations of communities and the needs of different catchments / regions; and
   4. iv) a fundamentally new approach to the way we manage and invest in our natural resources to deliver improved salinity and water quality benefits, involving integrated catchment / regional plans that stimulate best management practices, that restore degraded landscapes where that is practical and economic, and that promote new sustainable production systems.